Speaking to Pitchfork about the album, the band's Caroline Polachek said:

Moths aren't something you really see in New York City. You don't see them very often, at least, but we liked the idea of the moth as a metaphor for vulnerability, for something that’s fragile but relentless at the same time. It goes towards the light; it beats its wings until it dies. There are risks everywhere, but it doesn’t question them. So for us, that was sort of the attitude for the music: something really beautiful, vulnerable, honest.